|
But whence that circular movement?
In imitation of the Intellectual-Principle.
And does this movement belong to the material part or to the
Soul? Can we account for it on the ground that the Soul has
itself at once for centre and for the goal to which it must be
ceaselessly moving; or that, being self-centred it is not of
unlimited extension [and consequently must move ceaselessly to be
omnipresent], and that its revolution carries the material mass
with it?
If the Soul had been the moving power [by any such semi-physical
action] it would be so no longer; it would have accomplished the
act of moving and have brought the universe to rest; there would
be an end of this endless revolution.
In fact the Soul must be in repose or at least cannot have
spatial movement; how then, having itself a movement of quite
another order, could it communicate spatial movement?
But perhaps the circular movement [of the Kosmos as soul and
body] is not spatial or is spatial not primarily but only
incidentally.
What, by this explanation, would be the essential movement of the
kosmic soul?
A movement towards itself, the movement of self-awareness, of
self-intellection, of the living of its life, the movement of its
reaching to all things so that nothing shall lie outside of it,
nothing anywhere but within its scope.
The dominant in a living thing is what compasses it entirely and
makes it a unity.
If the Soul has no motion of any kind, it would not vitally
compass the Kosmos nor would the Kosmos, a thing of body, keep
its content alive, for the life of body is movement.
Any spatial motion there is will be limited; it will be not that
of Soul untrammelled but that of a material frame ensouled, an
animated organism; the movement will be partly of body, partly of
Soul, the body tending to the straight line which its nature
imposes, the Soul restraining it; the resultant will be the
compromise movement of a thing at once carried forward and at
rest.
But supposing that the circular movement is to be attributed to
the body, how is it to be explained, since all body, including
fire [which constitutes the heavens] has straightforward motion?
The answer is that forthright movement is maintained only pending
arrival at the place for which the moving thing is destined:
where a thing is ordained to be, there it seeks, of its nature,
to come for its rest; its motion is its tendence to its appointed
place.
Then, since the fire of the sidereal system has attained its
goal, why does it not stay at rest?
Evidently because the very nature of fire is to be mobile: if it
did not take the curve, its straight line would finally fling it
outside the universe: the circular course, then, is imperative.
But this would imply an act of providence?
Not quite: rather its own act under providence; attaining to that
realm, it must still take the circular course by its indwelling
nature; for it seeks the straight path onwards but finds no
further space and is driven back so that it recoils on the only
course left to it: there is nothing beyond; it has reached the
ultimate; it runs its course in the regions it occupies, itself
its own sphere, not destined to come to rest there, existing to
move.
Further, the centre of a circle [and therefore of the Kosmos] is
distinctively a point of rest: if the circumference outside were
not in motion, the universe would be no more than one vast
centre. And movement around the centre is all the more to be
expected in the case of a living thing whose nature binds it
within a body. Such motion alone can constitute its impulse
towards its centre: it cannot coincide with the centre, for then
there would be no circle; since this may not be, it whirls about
it; so only can it indulge its tendence.
If, on the other hand, the Kosmic circuit is due to the Soul, we
are not to think of a painful driving [wearing it down at last];
the soul does not use violence or in any way thwart nature, for
"Nature" is no other than the custom the All-Soul has
established. Omnipresent in its entirety, incapable of division,
the Soul of the universe communicates that quality of universal
presence to the heavens, too, in their degree, the degree, that
is, of pursuing universality and advancing towards it.
If the Soul halted anywhere, there the Kosmos, too, brought so
far, would halt: but the Soul encompasses all, and so the Kosmos
moves, seeking everything.
Yet never to attain?
On the contrary this very motion is its eternal attainment.
Or, better; the Soul is ceaselessly leading the Kosmos towards
itself: the continuous attraction communicates a continuous
movement- not to some outside space but towards the Soul and in
the one sphere with it, not in the straight line [which would
ultimately bring the moving body outside and below the Soul], but
in the curving course in which the moving body at every stage
possesses the Soul that is attracting it and bestowing itself
upon it.
If the soul were stationary, that is if [instead of presiding
over a Kosmos] it dwelt wholly and solely in the realm in which
every member is at rest, motion would be unknown; but, since the
Soul is not fixed in some one station There, the Kosmos must
travel to every point in quest of it, and never outside it: in a
circle, therefore.
|
|